The entrepreneurs behind internet music service Last.fm have returned with
Lumi, which aims to make finding new websites easier.

Martin Stiksel and Felix Miller, who made a fortune when they sold Last.fm to CBS for £140m in 2007, have today opened the new service to the public.

Lumi automatically processes a person’s vast collection of internet browsing data to gauge what they are interested in. It then presents a grid of recommended websites that those with similar interests have visited, with users then able to delve further into areas they are interested in, for example music or cricket.

Mr Miller and Mr Stiksel, who hail from Germany and Austria respectively and started Last.fm in London in 2002, said they were applying the same concept behind the music service to searching the web. Last.fm, which the founders left in 2009, tracks a user’s listening habits to suggest other artists.

“It occurred to us at Last.fm that we could apply the technology principle on a much wider scale,” Mr Stiksel told The Telegraph. “The concept that came out of that technology we are now applying with Lumi. People have all this internet data just lying around and not doing anything, and we want it to do something.”

They said using a person’s own internet history to suggest websites is a better way of finding content than popular services like Facebook or Google.

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“The browsing history is the best expression of what you're interested in, at least for your online life,” Mr Stiksel said. “You don't have to do anything extra, you don’t have to tick any boxes or ‘like’ things, follow people, subscribe to feeds or anything like this, it all happens automatically.”

Earlier this week, Facebook began opening up Graph Search, which allows people find things that have been recommended by their friends, to its 1bn users. However, Mr Stiksel said these social services were often unsuitable for finding content that people are interested in.

“Recommendations from friends are great but how many of them are really relevant for you, you need to pick and choose,” he said. “We condense it and make it all about what you're interested in.”

The founders said they do not currently have any plans to use the vast sums of data that its users hand over to sell adverts, and that it was too early to think about generating revenues. Lumi claims that the data it uses is anonymous and completely secure.

The free service, which was made available to a limited group of people in December, becomes available to everyone today.